


Our Lips are Sealed

by msgenevieve



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Captain Swan - Freeform, F/M, Humour, Tumblr Fic Prompt, Tweaked Canon, mildly AU, tweaked timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-15 22:33:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1321696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msgenevieve/pseuds/msgenevieve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing is, there are only so many times you can be told something’s true before you start believing it yourself. Especially if you’ve known it was true all along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Lips are Sealed

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Fic based on I Wont Say I'm In Love from Hercules maybe everybody getting on Emma's case and her denying then confessing. (Okay, I’ll admit it. I have never seen Hercules. But now, thanks to my anon prompter, I have watched this song many times on youtube. Ha! I had to tweak the timeline a little (okay, so a lot, and then leave out a heap of stuff because SPOILERS) but I really hope you like it. P.S. I’ve slipped in a few song lyrics as dialogue here and there, so obviously they don’t belong to me either!)

~*~

“So. You and Hook.”

Emma almost spits out the sip of coffee she’s just taken, because her father’s question is so obviously not a question and where is this even coming from?  “What?  Uh, no.” 

David’s quirk of his eyebrow could give their subject matter a run for his money. “Are you saying that he comes by the station every day just to bump into me?”

Briefly wishing she’d ordered the jumbo coffee - at least that way, she’d have a larger mug to hide behind – she gives her father a pointed look.  “You tell me.  Last time I checked, you guys were the ones who had the budding bromance happening.”

Her father’s knowing smile tells her he’s not buying her deflection routine for an instant, then he reaches for his own coffee.  He looks briefly as though he’s struggling to find the right words, then reaches across the table to pat her on the hand in an endearingly awkward way. “You could do a lot worse, you know.”

She stares at him. “ _You’ve_ changed your tune.”  There’s that knowing smile again, and she realises she’s supposed to be denying the subtle accusation, rather than quizzing her father on whether he actually really likes Hook now.  “Not that it matters.”  _Coffee,_ she thinks as she studies her cup as though the answers to the life, the universe and everything are engraved on it.  _More coffee will help._ “Because there’s nothing going on with me and Hook.”

David’s chuckle seems to brush against her reddened face.  “No, of course not.”

~*~

She finds herself walking along the beach a lot during her afternoon breaks, which isn’t really that strange when you live in Maine, but it’s not just geography.  There’s something else, something that keeps drawing her gaze to the docks where the Jolly Roger’s familiar outline is dark against the white hulls of the other boats.   As long as his ship is here, then _he_ is still here and she can keep putting off dealing with the thoughts that keep clawing and clawing at her head and her heart. 

It’s one of these afternoons that Mary Margaret finds her, in the exact same spot her father had found her when she’d skipped out on her lunch with Neal.  God, that seems like a lifetime ago.  In a way, of course, it actually is.  She eases herself down to sit next to Emma, one hand curved over her swollen belly as if for balance. “Penny for your thoughts?”

Emma gives her mother a wry smile. “Not sure they’re worth that much.”

They sit in a companionable silence for a while, then the other woman clears her throat. “So, I saw Neal today.”

Oh, no, not this again.  It’s been a while since her mother waved the Team Neal flag in Emma’s face, and she’d almost started to hope that the subject had been dropped.  Obviously, she’d been a little too optimistic. “Mary Margaret-”

Her mother ploughs on as though Emma hasn’t spoken.  “He was with Tinkerbell.”  She hesitates, carefully studying Emma’s face for clues.  “They seemed very close.”

“They’re old friends.” Emma shrugs as though this news doesn’t worry her in the slightest and, to her utter relief, it’s the truth.  “And if it’s anything more than that, well, I’m not his keeper.”

Mary Margaret’s face is a picture of conflicting impulses, and Emma feels a pang of sympathy.  She knows that her mother only wants her to be happy and find a happy ending like her parents, but she and David are the exception, not the rule.  “So you’d be okay if Neal was with someone else?”

“More than okay.” One day, she will sit her mother down and tell her the whole story of how and why she ended up giving birth to Henry in prison, but not today. That Neal is the reason why she has so much trouble believing that certain people will always be there for her.  “He’ll always be Henry’s father, but there’s no happy ending waiting for the two of us, trust me.”

Silence falls over them again, and again it’s a comfortable one.  Finally, her mother starts to laugh softly. “Remember when I used to come to you for relationship advice, and then completely ignore everything you said?”

“Yep.” Emma finds herself laughing, her mother’s amusement apparently infectious. “Look, I know you’re a big fan of True Love and all, but sometimes I think that no man’s worth the aggravation.”

“Some men are.” Her mother’s smile is a soft, secret one.  “You just have to find them.”   Rising to her feet awkwardly (at this point she resembles a well-dressed beach ball on legs), she looks down at her daughter.  “Or let _them_ find you.”

Emma feels a flush of colour come into her face.  There’s only one man who has crossed both realms and oceans to find her, and they both know it.  “Seriously?”

Her mother’s bright eyes gleam with mischief.  “Funny how other people can see things that we can’t, isn’t it?”

“Hilarious.” Emma narrows her gaze, praying her mother will think that her blush is due to the cold afternoon breeze whipping off the water.  “Shouldn’t you be getting home?  David will be worried.”

“Actually, he’s having a drink at The Rabbit Hole with Hook.”  The mischievous glint in her mother’s eyes seems to have taken up permanent residence.  “He said something about learning to appreciate old-school ale.”

“Good grief.” Emma tucks her hand through her mother’s arm, and gently draws her closer.  “So that’s why I’m on-call tonight.”  Her voice sounds casual and light-hearted.  _Good job, Emma._  “They’ll be there for hours, if last time is anything to go by. What the hell could they possibly find to talk about for that long?”

Her mother shoots her an uncomfortably familiar ‘really?’ look, and Emma puts up a warning hand.  “Don’t.  Just don’t.”

Patting the hand that’s tucked into the crook of her elbow, Mary Margaret merely smiles. “I feel like pizza for dinner.  What do you think?”

 _I think that if I have to have one more of these conversations about Hook with either you or my father, I might actually lock you both up,_ Emma thinks, then smiles.  “Sure.

~*~

Two days later, she drops Henry at Regina’s house, and finds herself lingering in the marbled foyer long after Henry has vanished upstairs on pounding feet into his room. “Regina, can I ask you something?”

Regina pauses in her study of her perfectly applied lipstick in the mirror. “If you must.”

“Why did I end up in New York?”  It’s a question that’s been niggling at her for weeks, ever since Hook found her. “Why not Boston, or Tallahassee, somewhere I’d actually lived before?”

“Well, my dear, isn’t it obvious?”  When Emma just shrugs, Regina rolls her eyes. “If anyone was going to find you, it was going to be the pirate, and I knew he was already familiar with that particular city.”  The other woman’s red mouth curves in a smirk.  “Call it an insurance policy.”

_Oh._

Emma leans against the door jam, trying to ignore the sudden fluttering in the pit of her belly. “But how did you know he’d be the one to find me?”

“Oh, please.”  Regina tosses the lipstick tube into the small drawer of the hallway table. “How you managed to survive in the real world for twenty-eight years with so little self-awareness astounds me. The man’s in love with you, as ridiculous as it might sound.”

Emma feels the blood drain from her face. This is not a conversation she’d banked on having when she asked her question. “Forget I asked.”

“Oh, and _you’re_ in love with him, which is even more ridiculous.” Regina has noticed her discomfort, of course, and her smile is gleeful. “The Saviour and the Pirate. It’s almost too clichéd for words.”

“I gotta go.”  Emma’s feet are heading towards the door almost of their own accord.  “I’ll see Henry on Friday, okay?”

“Yes, you run away, Sheriff Swan.”  Behind her, Regina sounds more amused than Emma’s ever heard her. “That will definitely help you with your pirate problem.”

Once she’s sitting in the sanctuary of her car - it had taken her a few tries to unlock the door, her hands were shaking so much – Emma grips the steering wheel and closes her eyes, trying to will away the last ten minutes from her memory.  When that doesn’t work (stupid stubborn magic), she decides on the next best thing.  There’s a bottle of wine in her parents’ fridge with her name on it, and if that doesn’t help, there’s always that bottle of rum that Hook left the last time he was visiting-

_Shit._

The memory of that night flashes into her head, bright bursts of feeling and warmth and laughter and flirting and a pleasant buzz of anticipation because they hadn’t been alone, but every time his eyes had caught hers, she’d read a promise in their bright depths.  A promise that they wouldn’t always be in a crowd, and she’d revelled in it.

She bows her head, so low that her forehead is almost touching the steering wheel, because she is so, so fucked.

~*~

“Seriously?”  Ruby looks from her, then to where Hook is sitting at another table near the window, apparently absorbed in a sailing magazine.  “Who do you think you’re kidding?”

Emma keeps her focus squarely on the woman standing at her table, and does not look towards any other patrons in any way, shape or form. “I’m just eating my lunch.”

“Read my lips, girl.”  A request that’s pretty easy when Ruby’s mouth is the lushest and reddest mouth in all the realms, Emma thinks, then Ruby bends down to whisper in her ear. “You’re in _love_.”

“Give me a break.”

Straightening, Ruby taps her nose.  “Wolf. I can sense these things, you know.”

Emma offers her friend (ha!) a stiff smile. “Can I have the check now?”

“You know what this is like?” 

“I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”

“This is like watching a replay of Snow and Charming pretending not to notice each other in here.”  Ruby’s eyes widen.  “God, you two are even at the same tables they used to sit at!” 

“Okay, that’s it.”  Emma slides a couple of bills across the table and pushes back her chair with an abrupt scraping on the hard floor.  Her well-trained peripheral vision spots a black figure to her right shifting in his seat as if to rise to his feet, and she knows she’s on borrowed time.  “Gotta get back to work.”

She makes a hasty exit, but as she heads back towards the station, she has the feeling that her escape is going to be short-lived.

~*~

She’s right.

“When are we going sailing on the Jolly Roger?”

“What?”  Distracted by the instructions on the back of the cookie dough packet, it takes her a few seconds to tune into Henry’s question, his first words as he comes through the door after school. “Uh, I don’t know.  Some time, I guess. 

Her son drops his school bag onto the floor, then his body onto the couch.  “What’s the point of you dating Captain Hook if we don’t go sailing?”

“Um, I’m not dating Hook.”

Turning to look at her over the back of the couch, her son wiggles his eyebrows at her. “That’s not what Granny says.”

“Is that so?”

Flopping back down, Henry reaches for the TV remote.  “He likes you,” he tells her, tossing the words over his shoulder. 

“Well, he’s not exactly subtle.”

“And _you_ like _him_.”

In the middle of sliding a tray of cookies into the over, she narrowly manages to avoid burning the inside of her arm on the hot wire shelf.  “How do you figure that, kid?”

“You laugh a lot when he’s around.”

She’s very glad Henry’s back is turned. “Yeah, but most of the time I’m laughing at him, not with him.”

Her respite is fleeting, because her son is once again hanging over the back of the couch, grinning at her. “ _And_ you look at him the way Robin looks at Mom when he thinks she’s not looking,” he finishes triumphantly, as though delivering a closing address before a jury.

Emma blinks.  _Regina and Robin Hood?_   Seriously, how has this become her life, she muses, then the deeper implications of Henry’s words sink in.  She can’t have this conversation right now, not with the man in question, and definitely not with her teenaged son.

“I’m not dating Hook.”

“But you want to, though, right?”

The heat in her face is surely from the oven, she tells herself.  “Do you want these cookies or not?”

~*~ 

The thing is, there are only so many times you can be told something’s true before you start believing it yourself.

Especially if you’ve known it was true all along.

~*~

“Swan!   To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“We need to talk.”

“I’m all ears, love.”  His smooth reply belies the sudden wariness in his eyes, but she doesn’t care.  She just has to get this out, and then she can leave.  She pushes past him, her boots clomping loudly on the hard wooden floor of the captain’s quarters, trying and failing not to notice that he’s only dressed in his shirt sleeves and leather trousers, and that the room smells of lemon soap and bay rum and clean sweat.

“You know, you’d think I’d have learned my lesson.”  She knows she’s babbling, but the floodgates are open, and she just can’t stop. “Oh, it always feels good when it starts, but then the yelling and the lying and the crying starts and the getting your heart ripped out - not literally, I should point out, _God, this town_ , although it feels that bad sometimes - and now everyone’s on my case about how they _know_ and how I should just _admit_ it and it wouldn’t be so awkward if I didn’t have all these ridiculous feelings for you and I just can’t.”

“You just can’t what?”

“Admit it.”

“Admit what, love?”

“This.”  She stops, bites her lip, her breath coming hard and fast now that her words seem to have dried up.  Her hand flutters between them helplessly. “You.”

“Emma.”  She looks at him, her heart starting to hammer against her ribs as he takes two slow steps towards her, his eyes never leaving hers.  He’s smiling, a smile that loosens the tight knot in the pit of her stomach and sends the butterflies soaring. “I’m going to kiss you now.”

And he does.

~*~

They take Henry sailing the next day.

Everyone else can wait their turn to gloat, she thinks.

~*~


End file.
